“Well, it’s all right this time, only kindly don’t do it again.” Then, after a pause, “Will you be with us long?”
“Well—er—that is—I really don’t know.”
“Family?” inquired the voice.
“Oh, no!” Little Black Bear hastened to reply, “I am quite alone. But who are you, if I may ask?”
“Hey, there!” came an entirely new voice, this time from very high overhead, “how long are you two going to keep folks awake with that chattering!”
But neither Little Black Bear nor the one to whom he had been talking answered so much as a word. Instead, silence now fell as deep as the night that surrounded the tree. Little Black Bear hardly dared move for fear the leaves might crackle and then, after a time—for he had already become drowsy—he gradually forgot the strange voices that had come from above, and slipped away into Slumberland.
Now whether it was this sound that awakened him, Little Black Bear had no way of knowing, but, however that may have been the very first thing that came to him when he again opened his eyes was the rhythm and ring of an echoing hammer. He knew it was a hammer, for he had sometimes seen the men of the circus at work on the cages. Indeed, as he lay there on the warm bed of leaves, he could almost see the nails slowly sink into place.
“Surely, now, some one must be building a house in the forest,” he said, as he scrambled to his feet and went to the door of the tree. “Yes, and it must be somewhere up the side of that slope.”
For, now that day had come, Little Black Bear could see that the tree in which he had spent the night stood at the foot of what looked to be a mountain—a mountain that was covered with trees quite as big as those that grew at its base. So closely did these stand and so dense were their boughs that it was only here and there that a bit of the sun found its way through the leaves. Because of this, Little Black Bear was reminded of the soft gray twilight-time that always brought Diggeldy Dan to the menagerie tent.
There were birds of many kinds in many, many trees twittering and teetering as if discussing their plans for the day. Their voices caused Little Black Bear to remember the mysterious ones of the night. But he soon dismissed them from mind, and turning his thoughts to peanuts and carrots, sat down with the lunch bag between his knees and devoured a most appetizing breakfast. Once more he was about to eat the taffy-on-the-stick, but again decided to wait until later. As he finished his last peanut, the pounding of the hammer sounded again and then, a moment later, came the rising and falling “gr-r-r-rrr” of a saw.